This section is intended to introduce various aspects of the art, which may be associated with exemplary embodiments of the present invention. This discussion is believed to assist in providing a framework to facilitate a better understanding of particular aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that this section should be read in this light, and not necessarily as admissions of prior art.
Geophysical prospecting involves the interpretation of geophysical subsurface imaging data, such as seismic, with the goal of building a conceptual model of the subsurface. This model is constructed by an interpreter by decomposing the subsurface into multiple interacting geologic features. In this process, interpreters often map features, or their boundary, using horizon surfaces (or simply “horizons” or “surfaces”) corresponding to different layers of rock or representing stratigraphic boundaries. If the horizon surfaces have limited areal extent with regard to a seismic volume they pertain, then they may be referred to as horizon patches or surface patches.
Given the importance of horizons for subsurface interpretation, methods have been developed to assist in detecting and mapping horizons within a seismic volume. There are a number of methods for mapping individual horizons based on seed points or constraints from which the horizon mapping method can extrapolate and map a horizon. Those methods assist in mapping one horizon at a time but typically interpreters need to map several horizons that characterize different geologic features or events.
More recently, methods have been proposed to map all peaks and troughs in a seismic volume in an automated fashion. These methods can be said to “skeletonize” a seismic volume and yield horizon surfaces or patches thereof. Examples of such methods include U.S. Pat. No. 8,213,261, “Method for geophysical and geological interpretation of seismic volumes in the domains of depth, time, and age”, by Matthias Imhof et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 8,566,069, “Method for geologically modeling seismic data by trace correlation”, by Fabien Pauget et al. Automated horizon mapping methods are useful interpretation tools because they preprocess the data and yield a dense stack of surfaces from which the interpreters can build upon. U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,213,261 and 8,566,069 are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.
There is extensive literature on methods for ranking and selecting in the context of database search results, content retrieval, and content delivery:                Patent Application US2014/0372454A1, “Method, system and apparatus for efficiently determining priority of data in a database”, by David R. Walker et al.;        Patent Application US2014/0372230A1, “Systems and methods for selecting and serving content items based on view probability”, by Jonathan W. Ray et al.; and        U.S. Pat. No. 8,903,834, “Recommending groups of items based on item ranks”, by John Ciancutti et al.Each of the above documents is hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.        
These methods are not applicable to the problem addressed by the present technological advancement because of the very different nature of the problem and its formulation. More fundamentally, they are designed to work with only a specific parametric form of a scoring function that is integrated in the solution to the problem and from which only the scoring function's parameters can be changed.
In contrast, in the present technological advancement, virtually any scoring function pertaining to the problem of selecting or ranking surfaces, or patches thereof, may be used. Moreover, the scoring function can be specified as an input to a method embodying the present technological advancement.
The literature also includes some examples of ranking of objects pertaining to hydrocarbon exploration or production:                International Patent Application WO2014/092713A2, “System, method and computer program product for evaluating and ranking geobodies using a Euler characteristic”, by Travis St. George Ramsay and Jeffrey Marc Yarus;        International Patent Application WO2014/065891A1, “System and method for analysis of trap integrity”, by Christian Hager et al.        Patent Application US2014/0303896A1, “Method for Quantitative Definition of Direct Hydrocarbon Indicators”, by Kelly Wrobel et al.; and        International Patent Application WO2011/149609A1, “Method for seismic hydrocarbon system analysis”, by Matthias Imhof et al.Each of the above documents is hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.        
U.S. Pat. No. 8,447,524, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference, describes a method that takes a typically large number of subsurface regions and analyzes them to automatically select or highlight the more relevant ones. An alternative embodiment of this method does not select regions, but instead ranks the regions based on their relevance as determined by their analysis. In the former case, the interpreter or a computer-based system continues work with a greatly reduced subset of regions. In the latter case, work may be continued with all regions, but time and resources are allocated based on the region ranks. In the context of this invention, a region is a collection of cells, or voxels, in a subsurface volume defined by one or more objects such as surfaces or geobodies. Moreover, the step of high-grading the objects encompasses, for example, selection, highlighting, prioritizing, or ranking. Different embodiments and parameterizations can be cascaded to sequentially remove ever more low priority regions or to improve the rankings.
None of these disclosures addresses the problem of ranking or selecting horizon surfaces or patches. Except for U.S. Pat. No. 8,447,524 and patent application WO2011/149609A1, these methods rely on a single parametric form of scoring function that is specific to the area of those disclosures which, as mentioned above, is different from the way scoring functions are used in the present technological advancement.